Artificial intelligence and Piagetian theory

One of the strengths of artificial intelligence ( 'AI') as a way of thinking about thinking is that it forces one to model the movement of the mind, the way in which a particular mental phenomenon comes about. It is not enough to say that a phenomenon can happen: the programmer must specify a way in which it can happen. (Whether this is the way in which it does happen is, of course, another question.) And one of the weaknesses of Piagetian theory for all its salutary stress on action as the context and carrier of mental life is its lack of specification of detailed procedural mechanisms competent to generate the behaviour it describes. Piaget's terms assimilation and accommodation are notorious examples: a leading Piagetian has even 'explained' the parrot's lack of linguistic creativity by saying that its sensorimotor scheme for speaking is very accurate in accommodation but quite meagre in assimilative power. 1 Even Piaget's careful descriptions of the development of behaviours such as weight and lengt~ seriation are related to uncomfortably vague remarks about the progression of stages, without it being made clear just how one stage (or set of conceptuaI structures) comes to follow another. This complementarity of strength and weakness suggests that a bringing together of AI ',and Piagetian theory might be fruitful. In particular, if AI workers can take account of the detailed empirical data provided by Piaget's observations, instead of working in a psychological vacuum, some crucial questions should be clarified • and some specific answers may be suggested. This theoretical clarification, in turn, should encourage further observations, so that AI can play a role in the development of 'scientific research programmes' in psychology. 2 In the next section, I mention some work in AI that bears on Piagetian theory, even though it was not done with Piaget's research specifically in mind. In Section 3, I outline some computational models of seriation behaviour that pay careful attention to empirical data such as Piaget described. And in Section 4, I ask whether this work has the implications for Piaget's theory of developmental stages that are claimed by its author.